The first Interzoneof 2013 will be here soon. Inside it you will find fiction from Jim Hawkins, Guy Haley, Helen Jackson, Lavie Tidhar, Tracie Welser and George Zebrowski, the regular nonfiction columns from David Langford, Tony Lee and Nick Lowe, and artwork from Warwick Fraser-Coombe, Richard Wagner, Martin Hanford and Jim Burns. Jim will also be providing all of this year’s covers. Follow the above link for more information and samples.

Any regular visitors to this blog will have noticed that there didn’t appear to be much going on in December. This was because I was literally flat on my back my back with a seasonal plague. Andy Cox had to step in and finish editing the Book Zone for me, for which I am profoundly grateful and not a little embarrassed.

This issue’s Book Zone features reviews of the following titles:

Throne of the Crescent Moon by Saladin Ahmed (reviewed and author interviewed by Ian Sales)

The January Locus sees Gardner Dozois reviewing no less than three issues of Interzone.

“The strongest story in the July-August Interzone#235 is Mercurio D. Rivera’s For Love’s Delirium Haunts the Fractured Mind, another in the series that Rivera hasbeen writing about the Wergen, aliens who have become obsessed with the ‘‘beauty’’ of humans […]The only thing I didn’t like about the story was that the first-person narrator dies at the end of the story […] Matthew Cook’s Insha’Allah [contains] some nice characterization, but could have been set in modern-day Iraq or Afghanistan with almost no changes necessary.Al Robertson’ s Of Dawn is a moody and evocative fantasy about a grieving woman who encounters a Pan-like mythic figure in the remote English backcountry. […]

“Another Wergen story by Rivera, Tethered, features in the September/October Interzone, #236. This one examines the peculiar mating dynamics of the Wergen through the lens of a friendship between a young Wergen girl and a young human girl, a friendship doomed when the Wergen girl comes of age, and it manages to generate a strong emotional charge by the end. Jason Sanford’s The Ever-Dreaming Verdict of Plagues is another of his ‘‘plague birds’’ stories, set in a strange post-apocalyptic world; entertaining, but the backstory may be getting a little hard to follow by now for those unfamiliar with the earlier stories. […] Stephen Kotowych’s A Time For Raven is a well-crafted near-fantasy with an almost subliminal fantasy element.

“The November/December Interzone, #237, is a strong issue after a couple of relatively weak ones. The best story here, and one of the strongest stories Interzone has published all year, is Digital Rites by Jim Hawkins, another story like All About Emily and Real Artists, about how human creativity is being supplanted, or at least intensively and intrusively ‘‘supplemented,’’ by artificial means, in this case a massive computer system that allows filmmakers to more or less experience a performance through the eyes of the actors, and subjectively control it. This is a vividly written and strongly characterized story, with a tense murder/espionage plot running through it: highly entertaining. I’d like to believe in the hopeful conclusion about human nature and the viewing audience that Hawkins comes to at the end, but, alas, I’m not sure that I do. Lavie Tidhar’s The Last Osama is also vividly written, almost lurid, in fact, but somehow Tidhar is skilled enough to make the story work, although it takes us on a melodramatic journey into the Heart of Darkness through a world mystically transformed by the death of Osama Bin Laden into something like a weird Spaghetti Western. This is much too surreal to be considered legitimate science fiction, but, whatever it is, it’s a lot of fun, and will stick with you after you turn the last page.”

Interzone 237 will be published later this month and contains fiction from Lavie Tidhar, Jim Hawkins, Douglas Lain and Caspian Gray. Richard Wagner, Steve Hambidge and David Gentry provide the artwork while David Langford, Nick Lowe and Tony Lee cover the non-fiction.

In February’s Locus, Rich Horton reviews Interzone 231 and says that “Sanford (and some other writers) are producing SF that truly has a different feel to much that has gone before”. He also says that Matthew Cook’s The Shoe Factory “[…]is strikingly resolved”.

Elsewhere there is a summary of 2010, and Jim Hawkins’ two Interzone stories are listed in the novelette’s section of the Locus recommended reading list for 2010.

Gardner Dozois, in his personal review of 2010, says Interzone had a strong year “[…]with good stories by Nina Allan, Lavie Tidhar, Jim Hawkins, Aliette de Bodard, and others.”

Rich Horton says that “TTA Press’s Interzone and Black Static continued in solid shape: each put out six fine issues.”

Locus guesses Interzone‘s circulation at 2000-3000 and also notes that Vector‘s circulation increased last year to over 600.

Gardner Dozois reviews Interzone 229 in the November Locus and says that Jim Hawkins’s Orchestral Manoeuvers in the Dark Matter is the strongest story. “This is a complex and chewy story, and it wouldn’t surprise me if some readers had trouble parsing it, particularily in the early going […] Stick with it, though, and you’ll ultimately be rewarded.” He also says that the rest of the stories “include some worthwhile reading”. Gardner also reviews Interzone 230 (which he feels is stronger than the previous issue) and says the strongest story “is Lavie Tidhar’s The Insurance Agent, a writer who’s having a good year so far, with several excellent stories published.” He also says that Nina Allan’s The Upstairs Window and Tim Lees’s Love and War are both “good”, and Patrick Samphire’s Camelot is “elegantly crafted”.

Rich Horton also reviews Interzone 230 in the same issue and makes The Upstairs Window one of his Recommended Stories.